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In a frank admission to investors, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has conceded that the platform holder cannot lay the blame for weak DS software sales solely at the feet of internet pirates.
Iwata has previously spoken about the endless battle” the firm faces trying to shut down the world’s many DS piracy device manufacturers, and has even appealed to the US Trade Representative to take stiffer action against copyright infringers.
However, Iwata now admits that Nintendo itself must shoulder some of the blame.
Of course, as a responsibility of the platform holder, we will tackle piracy,” he stated, according to CVG. When we launch new hardware, such as Nintendo 3DS, it is a good opportunity to beef up the countermeasures, and we are actually working on that now.
On the other hand, I do not think we should attribute bad software sales solely to piracy. Even with piracy, as long as we can create products which can attract attention from many consumers and which can greatly entertain them, that software can make it to the No. 1 position of the hit software sales chart.
So, we would like to consider it from both perspectives simultaneously. It is true there is always the influence of piracy, but it is important for us to increase the number of our consumers who are willing to shell out their money to purchase our products. So, we do not intend to think that slower sales are solely due to piracy.”
In April of this year the platform holder claimed that piracy was the driving force behind a 50 per cent drop in European DS software sales.
In the same month Take-Two CEO Ben Feder blamed piracy for the disappointing sales of portable Grand Theft Auto outing Chinatown Wars on the device.
